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Saturday, 31 January 2015

Well, here we are, the end of January and I have created this collage of all the pieces from this first month. They look great in their album here on my desk but seeing them like this makes me very happy! What do you think?

Looking forward to the next month and then the end of the year when there will be 12 posters just like this one!

Friday, 30 January 2015

The word that Mr Generator has given me today is IMAGINATION. As I have my Visible Image stamps on my desk right now doing top secret work, it was simply a case of grabbing this stamp, inking it up and embossing it with black powder. There we go, job done! Short but sweet.

Thursday, 29 January 2015

I'm late today I know but I have been VERY busy with DT work this morning! Can't wait to show you what I have been up to! It won't be long before I can tell you all about the new Visible Image stamps being launched soon. If you go to their Facebook Group you can get some sneaky peeks!

Today I have used a bit of card left over from a Christmas card I made for my DT. I think you have seen something made with this already. Anyway, I have used a lovely image of a seahorse from a design by Sheena Douglass. I did a lot of DT samples for her during my time in the group. These sealife and seascape stamps were one of my favourite releases.

Once again I have stamped and embossed with black and coloured parts of the seahorse further with Brushos. Added highlights with a white pen really make the image come to life.

Right, I must get back to my 'day job' and I hope to see you tomorrow for another ATC365.

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Another great word from The Generator! Today I got to use a really funky stamp for my ATC.

The background is a scrap of card coloured with Dylusions spray ink. I had made a piece of art for a friend and this was a trimming. The stamp is 'probably' one of those free ones from Craft Stamper magazine as it is the right size for this. I will look into it and check this info. I used bleach to remove colour and then added hints of turquoise and yellow. This ATC is a prime example of stamping 'off the page'. I think it actually shows the stamp off more than if it had been stamped bang in the middle.

Right, I have VERY important DT work to do today which I cannot tell you anything about! Ssssshhhh! Top secret!

Hello! Another new challenge over at Moo Mania & More. I loved looking at all your entries for the last challenge, so much creativity!

This time the theme is MASCULINE. In my head I have the song by Shania Twain, Impress me Much. A car like this features in the video along with some very 'confident' men. One of the lines of the song is

And a comb up his sleeve just in case

My Moo shows a very proud man with his prized car getting that quiff sorted with his comb which I imagine he has just taken from his turned up sleeve! He has a cheeky smile and a very confident attitude just like the men in the video.

I am looking forward to seeing your MASCULINE creations over the next 2 weeks.

Tuesday, 27 January 2015

Hello! I had such a blast last night at my new club! No I wasn't out dancing till the small hours, I was at the old school hall for a meeting of the Women's Institute. I am looking forward to the next meeting and all the activities 'we' have planned for 2015!

Speaking of which, here is my ATC365 for today. I am really pleased that this is turning out to be a pleasure to do. An ATC a day for 2015 might fill some with dread but I am loving it!

The random word generator was kind to me again and gave me the word PATTERN. Now that gave me probably too many choices as to which stamp I used, but I went with the less obvious choice of DRESS PATTERN.

The background is a remnant of a piece I created for a Visible Image project using Brusho and the Grunge Polka Dot stamp by Visible Image. I used a collage stamp for the dress making images which are embossed in black. The highlights were added and a couple of buttons finished it off.

Monday, 26 January 2015

The obvious choice would be the light bulb stamp from Tim Holtz. I have it but decided to use a plant bulb stamp. The TH stamp is nice but all the work is done for you by the man himself.

The background for the ATC is a piece of book page stuck to a piece of card. The stamp is actually much bigger than this and it shows the flowers. I coloured the images with purple as this was colour I had just used on another project. Some white highlights, a few shadows, a word stamped using an alphabet set and there we are!

What I am enjoying most about this challenge is re-discovering some of my stamps, especially my wood mounted ones. They have been ignored for too long!

Tomorrow I am off out in the morning so I won't be crafting till a little later in the day, but rest assured I will still make my ATC! I am not giving up on it!

As we all know it is Monday, but I don't like to think of it as just Monday!

To me it is

MARVELLOUS MONDAY

and that means I get to share one of my inspirational makes

using Visible Image stamps!

The story begins with a little note from my 'boss' Helen. She asked me to make something with a masculine feel using one of the fabby new romantic sentiments they have launched. I know we sometimes struggle with masculine makes but the TIME set and this sentiment work really well together.

Using some vivid but (I think) still masculine colours, I coloured a piece of A3 card with Brusho paints. When it was dry I used the cracked glass stamp with water to soak-away some of the colour. This is simply a case of spraying the stamp with plain water, stamping it onto the painted card and then dabbing away the water with kitchen roll. A simple technique but it is just right for backgrounds as it is no too imposing. I selected a nice area from the sheet and cut my base card to size.

Next I stamped the bottom part of the card with the cogs and small watch from the TIME set, masking as I went to create a pile of items. The large pocket watch and wings were stamped with black embossing powder and cut out. I did a dry assembly to check everything fitted before adding some clear embossed numbers.

The sentiments was stamped on a separate piece of card and another cut out small watch was added to join it all together. Highlights were added to make the images 'pop'.

Saturday, 24 January 2015

Oh Joy! It is the Weekend and I can legitimately play in my Craft Cave! I am going to have an afternoon of book making so as soon as I hit 'publish' I shall be back in there.

I have gone a bit overboard with this ATC today. The word I was presented with was BRUSH. I knew exactly which stamp I was going to use when I saw the word. I love this stamp. But I spent way too long on it! If each one took me as long as this one then I would never get anything else done.

Some of you will recognise the elements of this stamp. It was too big in the original form so I had to think of a way of getting the brushes on the ATC as well as the lovely text and swirl. I stamped the image twice and then cut the brushes out and turned them round. I added white highlights and soaked out some colour on the bristles. Honestly, the work was done for me as it is such a great stamp but it took me a while to cut the brushes out and position them so they covered up the original handles. Let me show you the stamp. It is by Stampendous.

Right, I am off for some more crafty therapy and I will be back again in the morning with my next ATC. Number 25, who would have thought it?

Friday, 23 January 2015

Right Mr Generator left me in a bit of a quandary this morning. Did he mean TRIANGLE as in musical instrument? Or as in Bermuda? Or as in the shape? Or as in that very old TV show featuring the late Kate O'Mara? Or a lurve TRIANGLE even! So many ways to go with this one but of course I don't have any Bermudan stamps, or a stamp of Channel Ferries so I decided to go with the shape.

As you can see I have used the triangles as the roofs, and yep, that is the correct plural of 'roof' not 'rooves'. You would have thought that as a horses hoof becomes hooves when they multiply! Where was I? Oh yes, as the roofs of these towers. Now the stamp needed a bit of cutting to fit the castle on, and one of the towers actually had a round roof to start with.

The background card was leftover from a very old project where I lined a box with this card. It was coloured with Gentle Blends. There you are, I do have other colouring media. I added some highlights with white pen. Another simple make but it fits the bill.

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Had a great morning so far, bit of housework, bit of cooking, and lots of crafting! Oh and coffee, lots of strong black coffee. I was up late last night 'chatting' with my DT about new stamps! But sssshhhh! You didn't hear that from me!

Mr Generator is being kind to me again today with the word OASIS. I bought this stamp some time ago as part of a set paying reference to Australia I think. Anyway the dictionary definition of as OASIS is "a fertile spot in a desert where water is found" and so this Australian stamp works for me!

The background is the red, orange, yellow bit from a rainbow coloured piece of card I painted. Every now and then I just paint a few sheets of card in rainbow stripes using Brusho paints as they come in handy for all sorts of projects. I love getting the colours to blend together seamlessly. (Just so you know I am NOT being sponsored by Brush, I just love using them!)

This ATC was simply made using the stamp and black embossing powder. I soaked away colour in certain places using plain water. The sun was just swirls of water blotted away. The banner is attached with waxed cord.

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Today Mr Generator gave me the word PROUD. I have used a lovely peacock feather stamp by Stampendous and one line from a Visible Image verse, HERE, which includes the word PROUD.

The background card was a rather pale washy piece coloured with Brusho. It had the right tones of colour suggestive of peacock feathers. I stamped and embossed the feathers with black embossing powder and added more Brusho colour to the feathers. The words were stamped and embossed and then cut out to separate them before being added to the ATC.

Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Hello Followers! Had a bit of a problematic night last night. Gas leak in our road and the team were out cutting the tarmac up with a disc cutter and using a digger all through the night! Sleep much? NO!! But better safe than sorry eh?

Right, today the lovely Mr Generator gave me GUARDIAN. It has only just, and I mean only just, occured to me that this is a very spooky coincidence. There must have been somebody looking over us in our street!

The stamp I seem to remember is from Elusive Images. I know the company is now Chocolate Baroque, but I bought this set years ago.

The background started life as a piece of gaudy coloured pink and teal card which I have bleached away on the body.

Well, just a quick make as you can imagine I am tired and on high alert in case I need to evacuate!

Monday, 19 January 2015

Quick dash around this morning, not a lot of crafting time so this really is a quick, one layer ATC!

Of course the first problem was the word Mr Generator gave me, bloomin' DRAGON! Why not something simple like CAT or ROSE? Nope! DRAGON.

OK, so the deed was done and I am sticking to my rules! I rushed to the craft room, nearly falling over one of the dogs on the way, darting past the pile of washing on the floor in the hallway, and grabbing the folder of stamps. Every new stamp I get is stamped into this folder under headings like FLOWERS, CREATURES, WORDS, BUILDINGS, with the box number that it is stored in so I can find it easily. Alas I don't have a section headed DRAGONS so I had to look in various places and found this in the ORIENTAL section. Didn't even remember I had it! It is wood mounted and I do own loads of wood mounted stamps but because they are stored "out of arms' reach" I don't tend to use them very often.

He (they are all male aren't they?) is stamped onto a piece of card which already had the regularly used Bronte Script stamp from Visible Image on it. I bleached around him and then added some doodles around the edge. Oh and a red gem for his eye.

The more I look at him the more pleased I am with it actually. Hasty but still a good result I think.

Hello my lovelies! What a snowy, cold week it has been. I hope that you are all OK? It was very changeable here on the coast but we didn't get any proper snow. We had hail mostly but enough to leave a layer about 5cm deep all over the garden. We also had thunder and lightning, which I can't ever remember having had before during the winter before! Weird!

So today I am showing you a simple card...........or is it? I have shown this to some of the other DT at Visible Image and they all thought it was an embossing folder. Well, as Visible Image don't make embossing folders (I will say 'YET' because you never know with these guys, anything is possible!). yeah, as they don't make embossing folders it would be wrong to make this the main feature. They do however make a brick stamp don't they. So how did I do this?

It all started out as piece of card which I had coloured using Brusho paints in brick colours, brown, black, some red and a bit of yellow. I had done the colouring in a patchy, random way, with some splattering and water drops because I wanted it to look like brick. Once it was totally dry I stamped onto it using clear embossing ink and powder using the brick stamp.

At some point during this process, maybe to wipe away some embossing powder, I inadvertently picked up a wet wipe instead of a piece of kitchen towel and wiped across the bricks. I was about to say 'Pooh-sticks' when I noticed something quite special. The wet wipe was exposing the mortar. Well it would because we all know that Brushos can be re-wet and soaked away when doing the splashes or high-lighting techniques!

Very soon I was wiping all over the piece of card and getting this very realistic bricks and mortar effect! I was a happy bunny, no mistakes after all.

I then used some of the Express Yourself stamps, stamped in white to look like graffiti, and some splats in black embossing powder. Now IF I was a character colourer, I would most certainly have put Jake on here with his skate board.

I am going to try this technique on some other projects and I will let you know what happens.

Sunday, 18 January 2015

I can't say the word Sunday without singing one of my favourite songs by Seth Lakeman! HERE is the link to the video just in case you feel the need to hear it and see who I am talking about. The Hurlers were a 'naughty' group of young men who, instead of going to church on Sunday, went to play a game of hurling on the moors and were turned to stone for their sin. HERE is the Wiki link about the stones.

OK, I am back now from a bit of internet wandering. It is like falling into a hole once I open a new window, on and on I go following links for hours!

My ATC today has absolutely nothing to do with any of that other than the fact that it is Sunday!

The random word generator gave me the word QUILT this morning. Rather than using a stamp of a quilt, I decided to use up some lovely pieces of coloured and embossed card left over from some note books I had made earlier in the week. Remind me to show you them. I took a cutting die and cut out about 10 pieces of card which I glued to a base. I then cut out the ATC at a jaunty angle.

Using a white pen I added faux stitches around the edge and on each piece, The sentiment and buttons finish the piece off.

This little paper project mimics exactly what is done when making fabric quilts. In both crafts the scraps are used to make another project!

Saturday, 17 January 2015

Well, I didn't get much housework done yesterday despite all my intentions. I did however get a few more big pieces of artwork done and some DT samples made. What the heck, who cares about a bit of dusting and hoovering?

Today the lovely Mr Generator told me to make something related to CASH. I have quite a few stamps with coin designs on and so I was pleased with this word. Looking back quickly on the previous ATCs I have made I noticed that I hadn't used anything with an oriental style. I have an awful lot of oriental style stamps so I headed straight for this stamp of coins. You will have to excuse the picture. It was quite grim outside and the natural light was pretty poor so I popped the desk lamp on and didn't notice the huge shadow!

The background is just a piece of red/orange Brusho coloured card. The stamp is quite heavy on the 'black' so I wanted the background to be quite strong. I stamped and embossed in black and then took away colour from inside the coins with water. I added a couple of strips of stamped and embossed card which looks a bit like Washi tape. I love this chevron stamp and have already used an accompanying stamp on an earlier ATC, #4.

Friday, 16 January 2015

Another night of high winds and hail. Coastal living is certainly exciting!

Mr Generator has given me the word APPLE today. I am blessed! I have a huge amount of other things to do today, most of them non-craft related, so the word I was given this morning has made my day start fairly gently. Posting this and then I will get the housework out of the way so I can disappear into my craft cave all weekend!

This APPLE ATC started out as a mistake. The card I had coloured a few months ago was supposed to be a medley of yellow and orange but somehow I managed to dip my brush into the dark green! Before realising my mistake I had splattered the Brusho green all over it. I know there is only a little bit of green on the ATC but I have a full A3 sheet coloured like this!

I used a lovely apple stamp which works really well with the watercolour style. The area of green on the card was covered with a cut out leaf and the apples are stamped directly onto the ATC using black archival ink. I enhanced the apples with a little more paint and stamped a delicate leaf pattern on the background to make it look like wallpaper. Shadow was added using a grey ProMarker.

Finally I stamped the word APPLE onto a another scrap of yellow card and added it to the ATC.

Right, my house isn't going to tidy itself. I wish it did! Nice to see you again and hope that you will keep with me on this journey.

Thursday, 15 January 2015

There we are! Another chance to use a Visible Image stamp as the main feature on one my ATCs. Thank you Mr Generator for being kind to me today!

The scrap of card had been coloured with Gentle Blends, which I must use more often. I started by stamping the castle, which is from the Once Upon a Time set from Visible Image (HERE), with black ink. Using a mask over the castle and a circle to leave an unstamped area for the moon, I stamped the Bronte Script, again from Visible Image, over the background, again just in black ink. No embossing today! I then coloured things up a bit with Brusho paint. The moon was then bleached to remove the background colour. I got a little too adventurous and added some shading using the wrong shade of Promarker but this just goes to show that mistakes happen! I wanted the castle to look inhabited so I added some white to the windows and under the door arch.

How about coming back tomorrow to see me again? I would love to hear what you think of my adventure, maybe you would leave me a comment?

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

OK, so the random word generator has been a bit naughty to me today! It gave me the word CYCLIST. Well, my cyclist has parked his/her bike and gone for a coffee as you can see!! I suppose the subject matter is still quite close to the word generated so I mustn't beat myself up too much about it.

I used a piece of card that had been coloured using Brusho paint splattered on with a toothbrush. I stamped the background using the Visible Image brick wall stamp from their background collection misted with water. The water had the effect of re-wetting the paint allowing the colour to move around with the pressure of the stamp. The bicycle was from a magazine free gift. It is the only cycle stamp I have so the theme was a near miss anyway! I then stamped the bus timetable onto a piece of white paper and dirtied it up a bit. Some shading using Promarker pen around the bike and there we are!

Back again tomorrow with another ATC and my finger are crossed that Mr Random doesn't give me another hard word.

Hope you like it? Have fun creating your challenge entry, and I look forward to seeing them on your blog.

While I have you here, I would like to let you know about a personal challenge I am doing this year. I am making an ATC a day for the whole of 2015. I am using a random word generator and making something using only scraps and stamps in my collection. So far so good! It isn't an open challenge as I don't have the time to manage a challenge at the moment. I have called it ATC365. If you have time it would be great if you could drop by and leave me a comment sometimes. Here are a few pics just to show you some I have made so far. Thanks!

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Hello from a very wet West Wales! According to Mr Weatherman it would seem there is going to be a lot of rain about over the next dew days. Best settle down in the craft cave and simply craft it out!

Today, day 13, presented me with the word NIGHTFALL. Any excuse for me to put a moon on my project! This ATC has a background I made for a Visible Image piece which used their fantastic script from the Revolution set, you know, the one that features the lovely splashing horses. They were released way back in the summer last year! I know because I was in the process of moving and didn't get much playtime with them.

The background was coloured with Brusho paints and the Revolution script was stamped with a grey dye ink. I used a circle stencil and some bleach to create the moon and then added the seed pods using black embossing powder and white Posca Pen. Simple but striking don't you think?

The seed heads are a Lavinia stamp, much used, but I like it as I can hi-light it to the max!

Monday, 12 January 2015

The lovely random word generator has been nice to me today, actually, it hasn't been bad up to now on any day!

So the word is MOLLUSC and here is my ATC representing all things squishy on the inside. Of course it had to be a sea mollusc as my head is well and truly coast oriented now. I actually pay more attention to the shipping forecast than the weather forecast and I know the tide times better than the shop opening times!

I used a stamp from Creative Expressions for the background as the feature stamp wasn't quite big enough. It is a frame but as you can see the empty middle is not seen. The sea shore stamp is another one of those eBay purchases but I think it is from Rubbadubbadoo. Please correct me if I am wrong.

The background was quite pale so once I had stamped the images with black embossing powder, I added colour using Brusho paint. A simple ATC but quite pretty don't you think?

Hello Readers! And a big HELLO to new visitors, hope you enjoy it here!

Today, with it being a Monday, it is of course Marvellous Monday with Visible Image. I have 2 tags for you today featuring a couple of the fantastic sentiments from the Express Yourself range. These are *the* most useful stamps! There are some great inspirational quotes which are small enough to be added to little projects like these tags but BIG enough to be a feature. Did you see my Karma card recently? Oh! You didn't? Well, I have no shame so here it is again, see how the sentiment sits perfectly as a main feature. If the butterfly wasn't there, the card would still 'work'.

Back to the tags! I took some remnants of Brusho coloured card and beefed them up a bit with some more colour. I then used the grunge polka dot stamp to remove some of the colour using just water which I dabbed off before it dried. I then used some dilute bleach and the Bronte Script to provide some white areas as well as using it with some ink to give some darker, more defined script. And then......yep more, I used the splats and blotches to add some more visual texture. You can barely see some of the stamping but it does make a difference. It is what makes these little projects so much fun to make. It is a great place to experiment. The main sentiments were stamped and embossed with black before even more bleach in the letters to make them 'pop'.

Just a couple more things to tell you about. First there is the release of some totally gorgeous romantic sentiments. If you ask me, they are pretty good for any time of the year but they are obviously totally right for the 14th February!

Available to buy today!

They are available as individual stamps but I am pretty sure you're going to want them all, I know I do! There is also the little Cupid set which is specially for Valentine's Day. Cute eh?

Available to buy today!

And secondly, here are all the linky-things you need to keep in touch with what Visible Image are all about.

Sunday, 11 January 2015

Any excuse to stamp a violin! I am totally obsessed with a very handsome violin (and most other string instruments!) player from Devon and so it is only natural that if there is any mention of strings then my mind connects with him!

So, this one is made using a Visible Image stamp for the background. It was stamped onto a scrap of paper I had used to blot away wet Brusho from another piece of card I was colouring. I stamped the violins onto another piece of the same card using black embossing powder. The big image was too big and so I had to chop the neck down a bit, sorry Mr Violin! Makes it look more like a double bass. I added some white hi-lights before sticking the instruments onto the base. I added a shadow line with a Pro-Marker around the violins.

Saturday, 10 January 2015

Hello again! How are you all? It has been a busy day so far. I am making a secret thing at the moment! Don't tell anyone!

It is day 10 and the idea generator gave me the word SHELTER. Does it somehow know that it is very windy here at the moment? Gale force 10 according to the shipping forecast. Shelter from the wind is required. Keep safe everyone. x

Anyway, as I am trying to look for positive things I decided that I would take it to be sheltering from the sun. I love this stamp, well I love the whole set that these images are from. It is by Crafty Individuals. It is stamped onto a piece of Brusho ombre card using black embossing powder and enhanced with bleach. Hope you like it?

Off to a committee meeting in a minute at The Coach House, our local visitor centre-cum-meeting place-cum-coffee shop at the abbey just round the corner from my house. Minutes will be taken and village matters discussed!

See you tomorrow for my next ATC in the journey. Wonder what word 'Gen' (my nickname for the generator) will throw at me?

Friday, 9 January 2015

This is going well, at least I think it is. It is my personal challenge and so I suppose I would be biased! Early start today, I have a few appointments to attend today.

Right, the lovely random word generator which I use gave me GRAPES this morning. A few minutes later I pulled these 2 stamp out of my stash and came up with this.

The 2 stamps are freebies and I can't remember which magazine but it was published a while ago. I like the way I was able to use both these stamps in this ATC, I mean they fitted well on the card don't you think?

The original card was coloured with Brusho paints. I then used the Visible Image Bronte Script stamp sprayed with water to repeatedly stamp over the whole page. This caused some of the Brusho colour to be transferred as I stamped again and again giving this tone on tone effect.

The vineyard image was stamped directly onto the ATC and the bottle was stamped onto another piece of the same card before mounting onto the card using a dimensional glue. I had bleached the colour away on the grapes, glass, around the frame and the chateau image.

I like the colours in this as they reflect warmth and harvest which compliments the images and theme.

Thursday, 8 January 2015

So happy today with this ATC! It features ONLY stamps from Visible Image. As I am on their Design Team I was looking forward to being able to use just their stamps on one of my ATCs so I could promote them. I know, I have no shame! Here we are then, my ATC for the word MEASURE.

When the word measure popped up from the generator I instantly thought of the lovely tape measure stamp that Visible Image have in their collection and then the numbers, a pocket watch, and the word Time all made their way onto the ATC!

The background card had been coloured with Brushos and I first stamped the pocket watch using bleach. I then used black embossing powder on the stamped images. A bit more bleach hi-lighting and there we are! I have to confess I got really excited when I found that the numbers fitted exactly onto the ATC. Did they plan that? I will have to ask.

Wednesday, 7 January 2015

No, I am not saying 'Sorry' to you, but that was the word that the random word generator gave me. I very nearly hit the button again but I stuck to my guns and headed off to the craft room.

#007/365 - SORRY

On my way there I was pondering my collection of sentiments and phrases as I was pretty sure that it was going to be a quote ATC. Of course there are the sympathy stamps but I didn't fancy using one of those. I know lots of crafters find it hard to use sympathy stamps other than when the need arises. Anyway, I came across this sentiment which I felt fitted the brief well enough! I will try not to be too

tenuous but sometimes you have to think outside of the box right?

I started with a remnant of paper which I had coloured with Dylusions inks and stamped with bleach using one of the incredibly versatile Visible Image stamps featuring hand writing. They have 2, one is the Bronte Script and the other is from the Revolution set. I am pretty sure this one is the latter. The flower is a free stamp from Craft Stamper magazine, perhaps a couple of years old now but still very 'now' in design. All stamped with black embossing powder. I also used water to draw some of the ink out from the paper in the flower to make it stand out more.

OK, so a whole week done now, it is still exciting me and I see no reason to give up!